May 21, 2015

Greek Culture Minister Nikos Xydakis has announced that the country is considering raising the admission fees for Archaeological sites.

In many ways, it is a shame that more of the archaeological sites and museums in Greece aren’t given more autonomy to set their own charges. As far as I am aware, the Acropolis Museum is the only state run institution with any real control over its own budget. As this worked fairly well (the museum has never closed due to strikes), I would have thought that other locations in the country ought to have also transferred to a similar model.

A new ticketing system sounds great (in theory), although Greece has never had the massive waits in queues that every site in Rome seems to. The focus here seems to be more ass using it as an excuse to increase charges than anything else.

Greece’s Culture Ministry has appointed a team of experts that are amining a change in the price structure of tickets to enter Greek museums and archaeological sites, Culture Minister Nikos Xydakis revealed on Monday as Kathimerini online reports. In a response to a question in Parliament, Xydakis said the panel would be examining schemes implemented in other countries and would not be proposing an across-the-board increase in ticket prices.

Xydakis added that the government will also introduce tickets giving access to multiple sites and museums. He said that a new ticketing system would be introduced at the Acropolis from June and would then be extended to the next 59 most popular sites and museums. The minister also indicated that the ministry would like to make greater commercial use of Greece’s heritage via the Internet, including offering more merchandise

I was just musing that with the Greek economy in such bad shape, many sites and museums should be raising their fees. Another suggestion I had was that wealthy individuals and corporations should be sought out for support of needy sites and landmarks. That isn’t to say that they’d have any kind of control, but they could publicly advertise that they supported whichever site, much as various US companies sponsor programming on National Public Radio or Public Broadcasting Service.

Neither of these ideas are a panacea to the current problem of preservation, research and publication of ancient heritage, but they’re better than nothing at all.

Maybe it is time for the Greek Government to start thinking more creatively about how to generate more income from the patrimony it has inherited. Maybe it should be more open to culling duplicates of everyday items that molder away in museum storerooms out of sight and unpublished. They do absolutely no good for anyone locked away and if there are dozens or more identical items, why not keep a few representative examples and sell the rest?

Antiquities are a hot commodity and get top dollar even now with the weak worldwide economy and I think the Greek Government could use every Euro and Dollar it can get right now.

It might not be a comfortable idea, but can the Greek Government afford to be choosy? Perhaps it is time to have a more pragmatic view that has less of a nationalism streak so deeply ingrained in it?

(Please note, these are strictly my own opinions and I’m not advocating that Greece is a failure. Far from it. Greece is an incredible nation with wonderful people and has much of the world’s patrimony within it. Why not simply sell some of the most minor material but keep the better quality artifacts and masterpieces for itself? Surely that wouldn’t be such a bad thing to help Greece, the various sites and the wonderful museums and people who work in them).

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